


bad listener

by LittleDragonPrince



Series: love is a tower where all of us can live [1]
Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-29
Updated: 2018-09-29
Packaged: 2019-07-18 14:13:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16120157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleDragonPrince/pseuds/LittleDragonPrince
Summary: There was a beat as Ms. Quirke seemed to consider something very carefully, her eyes flickering between Gordy and Serena – who both looked varying degrees of exasperated and pissed off – and Leon. “That’s… sort of it,” as she spoke, she stared into the middle distance between them, like she wasn’t sure who she should be addressing, “A metaphor is a figure of speech, used in a single phrase to compare two seemingly unrelated things to convey a certain image or idea. An allegory, on the other hand, is when the entire narrative uses its characters and events to symbolize something else entirely, usually to teach a lesson. Do you remember whatAnimal Farmis an allegory for?”No,Leon thought to himself, right as Gordy chimed in, “Communist Russia.”“Exactly!” Ms. Quirke said, her bright smile right back in place; she wasn’t looking at Leon at all now, instead focusing her attention entirely on his two classmates.xxxa mini-fic about the origins of one of pride's worst habits.





	bad listener

**Author's Note:**

> this is sooooooooo self-indulgent but also everything about SDS is, so, can y'all blame me... this isn't super long but thats becuase it was originally going to be a comic! so !!!! its just kind of a little tiny character study, nothing more.
> 
> CONTENT WARNING FOR child neglect and ableism pretty much just, all through out, i mean its all about pride being mistreated for his learning disability as a kid

Leon had always been tall for his age. Where most other seven-year-old boys had just hit four-feet, Leon was only three inches shy of being five. Adults were always cooing over how big he had gotten, how he was such a handsome kid, and it would be a lie to say he didn’t revel in it. His mama’s friends were especially fond of him; _you’ll be taller than Georgina in no time_ , they’d say, and Leon would laugh and eagerly reply that she was only five-foot-seven, it wouldn’t be difficult to outgrow her.

“I am tryna be taller than Pa, though,” he had said once, when the topic of his height had come up. He’d shot a grin his father’s direction, and earned a fond eyeroll in response. “He’s, like, eight feet tall, at least!”

“I’m six-three,” Pa corrected him, tone gentle but exasperated, “So good luck, kiddo.”

Sitting sandwiched between both his parents, however, Leon felt very, very small. He slouched down into his seat, arms folded limply in his lap; to his left, his father sat with his arms crossed, knuckles a stark white contrasted with the black sleeves of his suit jacket. His mother sat by his right side, fingers curled in an aborted gesture around the hem of her blouse, lips pursed.

Across from them sat Herr Habich, Leon’s homeroom teacher, looking as stern as ever. He had a big file of paper on his desk, hidden beneath his folded arms, but Leon had a feeling he knew what was in it.

“So,” said Herr Habich, very slowly, as if he wasn’t sure he wanted to be speaking at all, “I’m sure it will come as no surprise to either of you that your son is… struggling.”

“No, it doesn’t,” his father said, too stony-faced for Leon to read. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his mother’s hands fidget in her lap, her shirt pulled taut for just a second by the motion.

“Don’t get me wrong, he’s a delight to have in class,” his teacher continued hurriedly, and Leon wondered, for just a moment, if he was trying to lift the solemn mood that had fallen over the classroom since this parent-teacher conference had begun, “He gets along well with the other children, he’s polite to all the teachers, he loves to make people laugh – and he loves art class, has a real knack for painting, but. When it comes to academics. He’s having a very difficult time.”

“Leon has always been a jokester!” laughed Mama; though there was a smile on her face, her voice sounded nervous, and the contradiction made something in Leon’s stomach squirm painfully. She was focusing on all the compliments Herr Habich had just paid him, and he appreciated it, he really did, but her words fell flat, and the tension in the air didn’t dissipate.

“He never takes things seriously,” Pa added, and Leon barely managed to stifle his wince. He hated when Pa got like this, all grim and cold and exasperated-but-not-gentle. He hadn’t always been like this, but the further Leon got in school, the worse his grades became, and the less Pa smiled or laughed or gave him piggyback rides. These parent-teacher conferences were only getting more frequent, and Pa always left them looking a little bit older, more rough around the edges. “Are you sure he’s not just struggling because he’s not trying?”

Leon _was_ trying, he really was, and he was about to chime in to defend himself when Herr Habich beat him to it. “That isn’t it. When lessons start, at least, he tries his absolute best – maybe even harder than the other kids! – but it’s… harder for him,” for the first time since the meeting began, Herr Habich’s eyes flickered down to meet Leon’s. He seemed sad, and Leon felt a pang in his heart – Herr Habich was always nice to him, always helped him open the packaging on his snacks when he had a hard time with it, never complained about having to use the hot glue gun _for_ Leon during arts-and-crafts because he knew Leon was afraid of burning himself on it. It was hard enough to know he was upsetting his parents – upsetting Herr Habich, who refused to give up on Leon despite his grades, felt like the ultimate failure.

As quickly as it had started, the eye contact ended – Herr Habich looked back up at Leon’s parents, and Leon let his gaze drop back down to the classroom floor. To his left, his father scoffed. “What are you saying? That my son is stupid?”

“Pa!” Leon couldn’t help but shout, breaking the silence he’d carefully maintained since their car had pulled into the school parking lot. He couldn’t help it – his father’s brusque words had startled him – and judging by the fact his mother had stopped to sternly say “Patrick!” at the exact same instance, he figured she felt the same.

“That’s not what I’m saying at all, sir,” Herr Habich said as he raised both hands in placation. When he shifted, the papers on his desk did, too, and Leon tilted his head to try to read them – but he wasn’t a good reader normally, let alone trying to do it when the words were upside down, so he quickly abandoned his efforts. “I’m just saying… it’s not typical for a child of Leon’s age to struggle this much. He might have a learning disability; I believe it’d be in your family’s best interest to have him screened for one.”

Those words had a palpable affect on his parents – the temperature of the room seemed to drop as Pa’s shoulders stiffened and Mama’s shoulders sagged – but all Leon felt was confusion. He’d never heard that word – _screened_ – before, and he couldn’t work out what it had to do with the conversation. “What’s screen mean?” he asked, despite himself, and every adult in the room seemed startled, as if they had forgotten he was in the room.

“What was that, pet?” Pa said, the anger replaced by a soft kind of bewilderment. Leon felt a rush of annoyance – seriously, did his father forget he was sitting right next to him? – and crossed both arms with a huff.

“I wanna know what the word ‘screen’ means,” he insisted, sitting up as straight as he could in an attempt to look taller than he felt, “And why you wanna do it with me.”

There was a long beat of silence. Herr Hadich’s expression had soured, refusing to make eye contact with Leon despite him glaring defiantly across the desk at his teacher. It was his mother who spoke first, lilting and overly polite, like she was speaking to a child much younger than Leon actually was.

“Don’t worry about it, sweetie,” she said with a wan smile; Leon only pouted in return, “It’s adult stuff.”

“No, it’s not!” snapped Leon; he immediately regretted it, because he _never_ talked to Mama like that, especially not in front of other adults. Her brow furrowed – in surprise or in frustration, Leon couldn’t tell – and he rushed to explain himself, voice much softer than before, “You’re… you’re talking about me. Right? You have to be. What’s happening?”

On his other side, his father heaved a sigh through his nose. Leon looked to him, expecting an answer or a response, but Pa didn’t look back – instead, he stared over the top of Leon’s head at Leon’s mother, and said, “Take him outside for a little bit, won’t you, Gena.”

He didn’t sound mad anymore, just tired, defeated, the way he always got after having to come to Leon’s schools and talk to Leon’s teachers about Leon’s grades. He wanted to say something more, wanted to insist Pa give him an answer – and for a moment, he thought Mama might insist _for_ him – but then his mother’s hand came to rest on his shoulder, warm and comforting, and any urge to fight his father dissipated.

“Let’s leave Pa and Herr Habich to talk, okay, Häschen?” Mama said as she stood, very slowly, as if she didn’t want to move until she was sure Leon was following her. He wanted to stay, wanted to hear what Herr Habich and Pa were saying about him, but they had gone silent, staring awkwardly at one another without sparing a glance down in Leon’s direction.

“…Alright,” he conceded, and moved to walk beside his mother, huddled into her side and unwilling to admit how much better he felt with her hand pressed between his shoulder blades. As the door to the classroom shut behind them, Leon heard Pa and Herr Habich’s voices start back up and faltered to a stop.

“C’mon, Leon,” Mama was starting to sound fed up, just a little bit, and he took a half-step forward on instinct. She pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. “I know you want to stay here and listen but – you wouldn’t understand, okay, some things are too complicated for _you_ to…”

The fight left her posture as Leon took another two steps to catch up with her, one arm snaking out to wrap a tiny hand around her proffered wrist for comfort. She never ended up completing her thought after she’d trailed off, never finished her full sentence, but Leon was alright with that. He could guess what she had been trying to say; he had heard it many times before. He didn’t particularly want to hear it again.

**xxx**

Leon was twelve now, and so much had changed. Mama and Pa had split just a year or so after that meeting with Herr Habich, and together he and Pa moved back to Pa’s hometown in New Jersey, leaving Mama behind in Germany. For the first ten months in the States, they shared an apartment with family members Leon had only met a few times, as a child too young to fully remember. Nobody there spoke German, so Leon stopped speaking German, too. Ocean City was nothing like Cuxhaven – the only similarity was the ocean, but even that didn’t feel the same.

There were only two facts that remained true, despite all the other changes in Leon’s life: he was taller than his classmates, and stupider than them as well.

“I still don’t really get what an allegory is,” he said, pulling at the broken wire binding of his spiral notebook. It was third Period – English class, not a subject he enjoyed – and Ms. Quirke had allowed the various project groups of the class to disperse throughout the hallway to talk about their plans. Leon was supposed to make a posterboard presentation about some book called _Animal Farm_ that, if Leon were being honest, he had barely read, choosing instead to skim through the chapters they assigned and take guesses on pop quizzes.

His partners for the project – Gordy and Serena – looked at him in puzzlement and frustration respectively. “How do you not understand?” Serena asked, head tilted to one side and eyes narrowed as if trying to figure out a lie. “Ms. Quirke _just_ explained it to us-,”

“I know,” he said, so rapidly that Serena barely managed to finish her sentence, “But, I dunno, I still don’t get it.”

“That’s fine,” Gordy cut in before Serena could retort; she settled, instead, for quietly rolling her eyes, “That’s totally cool. You’re really good at, like… drawing and making stuff, right?”

“Um, yeah, I guess,” said Leon, though it felt somewhat like a lie. He was nowhere near the best art student in the seventh grade, but he liked painting, liked making things look nice, and his art teacher adored him for it. He didn’t think he was particularly skilled at art, however.

“Then you can focus on makin’ the poster look good,” Gordy said with a smile, “And Serena and I will do the lame analysis stuff. No problem.”

Leon would readily admit it was a relief to hear that – he didn’t want to have to study this dumb book any more than he’d already been forced to by the teacher – and with a grin he turned back to his notebook, within which he was doodling and scribbling nonsense out of boredom. For awhile, he got to sit in peaceful silence while Gordy and Serena mumbled to each other, only looking up every few minutes to crack a joke in response to something one of them had said. They would laugh, roll their eyes, smack Leon on his shoulder, and for a second he could forget that he was being useless.

Like everything else in Leon’s life, however, that moment of easy conversation couldn’t last. After about twenty minutes had passed, Ms. Quirke circled around to their group, squatting down to join them on the hallway floor. “So!” she said, grinning brightly; despite hating her class, Leon tried to smile back, “How’re things going over here?”

“Good,” replied Serena while Gordy nodded rapidly beside her.

“Great! Glad to hear it,” she said, “D’you have any questions?”

Gordy and Serena both chorused no, they were fine, they didn’t need any help, and Ms. Quirke beamed at all three of them in response. As she moved to stand, however, Leon raised one hand up and practically yelled, “Wait, what’s an allegory?”

Everybody else seemed to stop; a pensive frown took over Ms. Quirke’s face, and on either side of him, Gordy and Serena groaned.

“Leon, we already went _over_ this-,” Gordy started to say, and Leon winced at the annoyance in his voice.

“No, I know, I know, but,” here, Leon had to stutter to a stop to think it through – he knew what he needed to ask, he just didn’t know how to ask it. “Okay, like, a similie is when someone uses the word ‘like’ to compare one thing to something else. And a metaphor is like a similie, kind of, it’s saying something is another thing that it’s not actually. And that’s all to make books, like, nicer and more fancy,” he paused and looked up at Ms. Quirke; she looked thoughtful, but not upset, so he continued, “So is an allegory just… a metaphor? Or something else entirely?”

There was a beat as Ms. Quirke seemed to consider something very carefully, her eyes flickering between Gordy and Serena – who both looked varying degrees of exasperated and pissed off – and Leon. “That’s… sort of it,” as she spoke, she stared into the middle distance between them, like she wasn’t sure who she should be addressing, “A metaphor is a figure of speech, used in a single phrase to compare two seemingly unrelated things to convey a certain image or idea. An allegory, on the other hand, is when the entire narrative uses its characters and events to symbolize something else entirely, usually to teach a lesson. Do you remember what _Animal Farm_ is an allegory for?”

 _No_ , Leon thought to himself, right as Gordy chimed in, “Communist Russia.”

“Exactly!” Ms. Quirke said, her bright smile right back in place; she wasn’t looking at Leon at all now, instead focusing her attention entirely on his two classmates, “Did that clear things up for you?”

Both Gordy and Serena nodded rapidly, murmuring in agreement, and Ms. Quirke’s smile only seemed to get wider. Leon, however, couldn’t help but frown – he had far more questions. What did she mean by symbolize? And what lesson was he supposed to be learning? He hoped maybe Ms. Quirke could give him some examples of both metaphors and allegories – examples always helped him grasp things better - but before he could ask, she had stood up and left, with nothing more than a small wave over her shoulder.

“Oh my _God_ , dude,” groaned Serena, turning to glare in Leon’s direction. He shrank away from her, all of his questions dying on the tip of his tongue, “What did Gordy just tell you! Just focus on making everything look pretty, okay, leave the smart stuff up to us. Jesus.”

Leon opened his mouth to retort, or maybe to apologize, but Serena had returned to her notebook, face furious, and Gordy was looking at him with something like pity in his eyes. Eventually, the silence evaporated around them, and Gordy and Serena began chatting about the project again. They kept their voices lower than before, so low Leon had to strain to hear what they were saying; eventually he gave up, and returned to his own doodles, not saying another word for the rest of third period.

**xxx**

Leon hadn’t meant to get suspended, it had just sort of… happened. Leon’s older cousin worked on the boardwalk selling firecrackers, and Alexander and Beck insisted it would be fun to set some off in the gym at school. It hadn’t taken much insisting at all for Leon to go along with it – Alex and Beck’s ideas were always exciting, and they let him copy their homework in return for sneaking all kinds of things onto campus for them – but in the end, none of them managed to set the fireworks off. They’d been caught by a herd of Freshmen arriving for their gym class, and immediately sent to the principal’s office. All three of them were suspended, but Leon caught the brunt of the verbal punishment after it was revealed they were _his_ bottle rockets in the first place.

Despite the plan failing, however, Leon couldn’t find it within himself to be very surprised. He usually took the fall for Alex and Beck when things went wrong during their pranks. They were his friends, and he was always a bit slower and dumber than them, so it was inevitable, in a way – he couldn’t hold it against them. If he was smarter, he’d do the same thing to them – it was just a natural part of their friendship.

Pa, on the other hand, was furious. It was a shame, too, because for awhile it had seemed like maybe their relationship was on the mend. Two years ago, Leon had taken an interest in his father’s career as a chemist, and with Pa’s help, had been learning all about the science. He didn’t understand it, not really, but he had a penchant for memorization that even his father had to admire. The two got along better during that period of time than they had in years, since before their move over to America, but then Leon entered high school and realized there were so many other ways to get his pa’s attention, and so many of them were way more fun than reading a chemistry textbook.

Not that he particularly minded the textbooks – chemistry had, over time, become a real interest for him. He didn’t understand it, sure, but he _wanted_ to. That was how he found himself spending his suspension hunkered over one of Pa’s old teaching materials. It was a textbook about physical science for a ninth grade class; Leon was a tenth grader, but he still had to sit close to the family desktop to Google any phrases or words he didn’t comprehend.

From the other room, Leon heard Pa speaking to someone else, another adult man. It was a professional conversation, but leisurely. He tried to tune them out, but as they moved through the house chatting, curiosity got the better of him. No amount of passion for chemistry could stop Leon from investigating when a stranger arrived at their home. He padded his way into the kitchen, where the voices were currently coming from, and saw his father talking to a man dressed in jeans and a loose, dark-colored t-shirt, an orange box resting by his feet. Unsurprisingly, Leon didn’t recognize him.

“I don’t know what’s causing it,” Pa was saying, fiddling with the kitchen faucet, “But there’s no middleground between hot and cold. It makes doing dishes absolutely miserable.”

 _Oh, duh,_ Leon thought to himself with a chuckle, _The handyman was gonna come around today._

Neither adult seemed to have notice Leon’s arrival, however, too caught up in peering at the sink. “I’ll go take a look at your heater, see what I can do,” the handyman said, running one hand through his short, cropped hair, “Y’said it was in the basement, right?”

“Right,” Pa said, turning the running water off at last, “I’ll lead you to it.”

“Wait!” Leon blurted out, not meaning to announce himself so rudely but also not willing to wait until he was quietly spotted. The handyman, whose back had been to Leon, visibly jumped; Pa seemed surprised also, head immediately swivelling to look in his son’s direction. Shoulders pressed back in a confidence he didn’t really feel, Leon took the last few steps into the kitchen to stand beside the other two men, “Can I come watch… whatever it is you’re doing? It might be kinda cool!”

It would, at the very least, beat sitting alone in his house, reading books he could barely understand. The handyman continued to look bewildered, obviously not expecting another person to be at their home, while his father simply looked tired. There was a long pause during which nobody said a word, and then Pa turned away from Leon fully and said, clearly to the handyman and the handyman alone: “Sorry. I can show you to the basement now.”

It was like the floor had fallen away underneath Leon’s feet. It was miraculous his legs didn’t buckle, that he could stay standing, because for a terrifying second he thought he might collapse under the weight of just that one word – _sorry_.

“E-excuse me?” Leon said, though it sounded far away and so, so quiet, all the air knocked out of him; his father was already ushering the handyman out of the kitchen, shooting a glare over his shoulder in Leon’s direction as if to warn him away from arguing. But when had Leon ever listened to warnings before. “Did you just apologize for me _talking_ to y-?”

“Leon,” Pa sounded angry, somehow even angrier than when he was called into the principal’s office earlier that week, and despite the white hot rage he felt, Leon still flinched a little bit at his father’s tone. While Pa’s eyes never left Leon’s face, he didn’t say his next words to him – instead, they were clearly directed at the handyman, still hovering awkwardly by his side. “Again, I’m sorry – just ignore him.”

There was nothing Leon could think to say to that – to his father looking right at him without really acknowledging his presence – but in the end, he didn’t have to. The two left in a hurry, both clearly desperate to escape the tense atmosphere of the kitchen. It was unbearable, the weight in his chest, the weakness in his knees, the burning in his eyes. None of that was the worst part, however.

The worst part was that all of these feelings were familiar by now, were a near weekly thing for him, and he didn’t seem to be getting used to it. He was too stupid to learn even something as basic as this.

**xxx**

“--ning to me? Pride? Hello, _Pride?_ ”

It was the sound of his own name that startled Pride out of his silent reverie. Jumping to attention, he blinked owlishly across the table at Wrath, who was glaring at him with barely disguised frustration.

“What’s up?” he said, with the coyest smile he could manage. A second ago he’d been scrolling through his Instagram feed, robotically double-tapping any picture he saw, but now he put the phone face down on the table out of courtesy to his boss.

Wrath didn’t seem to appreciate it, just continued to glare daggers in his direction. “Were you paying any attention at _all_ to what I was saying.”

“I’m gonna be honest with you, because I love you,” Pride said as he slumped backwards in his seat; Envy, who was sat next to Wrath, curled xer lip, “No. Not at all.”

“Why – what is wrong with you?” she snapped, smacking one hand-palmed hand down on the table as if to ensure he didn’t stop paying attention; he couldn’t help but roll his eyes and shrug.

“I didn’t know you were even talking to me,” he confessed, unable to keep the bitterness out of his voice.

“H-how? I was literally answering a question _you_ asked me!”

Pride scoffed in disbelief. “That doesn’t _mean_ anything,” he said, and Wrath just blinked across the table at him, jaw dropped open. As a matter of fact, everyone was looking at him, each with a very different expression on their face – Lust looked concerned, Envy looked disgusted, Greed looked annoyed, and Gluttony – who was seated right next to Pride, as usual – looked bored. But Gluttony always sort of looked bored.

For a moment, Wrath’s mouth opened and shut, as if she wanted to speak but couldn’t choke the words out. At long last she snapped, eyes turning away from Pride and instead settling on Gluttony by his side, “I’m not repeating all of that for his sake. You can fill him in on it later, right, Gluttony?” For a brief second, her gaze flickered back over to Pride, right as she said, “And you can dumb it down for him, too?”

Gluttony didn’t say anything, just nodded minutely, and then Wrath heaved another sigh and continued on with what she had been saying before the interruption, relaying the rest of the plan to the rest of the team. Pride, meanwhile, picked his phone back up and tried to ignore the pit in his stomach, the all-too-familiar ache in his chest. He didn’t bother paying attention for the rest of the meeting, even when he heard his name crop up a few times. There was no point in listening to a conversation he wasn’t apart of, after all.


End file.
